about Mercury in the 7th House or Libra .. Freud´s Mercury

(…) In some cases, Mercury in the 7th House or Libra reflects the evolutionary intention to create an intellectual basis of understanding allowing the individual to integrate with other people as an equal, demanding that he or she learn to identify the needs of other people in general, and of others with whom the individual relates on personal terms. This creates an archetypical paradox in which, on the one hand, the individual needs to listen to others, and communicate with others in ways which can be understood by others from their own points of view and according to their own intellectual constructions. This can require the individual to use the linguistic forms of other people. On the other hand, a need exists for the individual to preserve its own intellectual constructions and points of view, and more generally, its own way of being, which is a basis of how the individual can share itself with others. The need to listen to others and to adapt to the intellectual patterns and overall ways of being of other people can create the feeling for the individual that its own nature or essence is lost. On the other hand, the need to preserve its own nature or essence, and the individual ways of thinking and communicating, threatens to alienate others who can also feel their own individuality, or their own ways of looking at things, are lost or absorbed through the relationship of exchange. The manifestations of this paradox will be different in each case, depending on the evolutionary situation of the individual, reflected on the general signature of the birthchart, and the evolutionary axis specifically, relative to the existing evolutionary condition. In general terms, several temptations can originate from this paradox. One temptation is for the individual to totally preserve its own constructions and to impose its ways of thinking and communicating on other people. A second temptation is to become totally absorbed in the thought forms of others, and to lose sight of the own point of view. A variation of this can be to create a duplicity in which the own point of view is concealed, or an apparent agreement or commonality of points of view for different reasons. A third temptation is to settle in terms which are not satisfying for either the individual or the other party. We can see an example of the first dynamic in the birthchart of Sigmund Freud, who had Mercury in the 7th House in Taurus.

Sigmund Freud

Freud developed a talking cure he called psychoanalysis, in which he would silently or passively listen to the communication flow of the clients. In turn, he would then project his own subjective intellectual constructions on the clients, based on his pre-existing associations of meaning relative to sexuality as a primary or exclusive focus, which were based on his own unresolved sexual issues: Pluto in Taurus in the 6th House, conjunct Venus in Aries in the 6th House, Venus being the ruler of the South Node, and Pluto being the ruler of the 1st House cusp. Thus, he actually heard and gave meaning to what his clients said by means of projecting and giving a universal scope to his own issues and interpretations of these issues-Mercury is the ruler of the 8th and the 11th Houses, and Mercury is conjunct Uranus, while Capricorn in the 3rd House cusp is ruled by Saturn in the 8th House, in Gemini, square Mars Rx in Libra in the 11th House, Mars being the ruler of the 6th House cusp and being inconjunct Pluto-thus, a need to force his own intellectual arrangements on others and to obtain confirmation by means of a generalized projection of his own feelings of impurity and guilt about his sexual nature.

In turn, this projection and rationalization served as a device to prevent him from really penetrating the core of his own unresolved issues, even to a point in which he would change the direction of his investigations when they threatened to expose some of his own dynamics-we have to remember that Freud postulated the need for repression in order for culture to exist. We can see a manifestation of this dynamic in Freud’s abandonment of his ‘seduction theory’. Based on his initial work with hypnosis in hysteria, Freud had proposed that hysteria originated in a situation of sexual abuse or seduction of some kind which had been traumatic, and which had been repressed. We can see in these very symbols in Freud’s birthchart pre-existing dynamics of sexual seduction: Pluto conjunct Vesta in Taurus, and Balsamic conjunct Venus in Aries, with Venus ruling the South Node in Libra in the 12th House. Pluto is the ruler of the 1st House in Scorpio, and Jupiter in Pisces in the 5th House, ruler of the 2nd House, is conjunct Neptune in Pisces in the 5th House, Neptune and Jupiter squaring Saturn in Gemini in the 8th House which squares Mars in Libra in the 11th House. These symbols correlate with glamourized and fantasized attractions which are combined with a strong sexual nature of masturbatory orientation, to a point of sexual addiction, and lo ‘love of the phallus’, which however have been repressed and detached from for different reasons, including patriarchal judgments relative to the sexual nature-Pluto, the ruler of the 1st House, is in the 6th House in Taurus, and inconjunct Mars, Jupiter, ruler of the 2nd House, is in Pisces and squares Saturn in Gemini in the 8th House; Venus in Aries is in the 6th House. These dynamics have coexisted with a fundamental need to be free in order to explore different ways to be in relationships: the ruler of the South Node in Libra is Venus, and Venus is in Aries conjunct Pluto; Mars, ruler of the North Node in Aries, is Rx in the 11th House, in Libra, in mutual reception with Venus in Aries. In this context, Mercury in the 7th House in Taurus trine Mars in Libra and being ruled by Venus in Aries, further confirmed by the Moon in the 8th House in Gemini square Neptune in the 5th House, reflects a dynamic of using language forms to attract, ‘hook’, and seduce other people for sexual reasons, however without consciously acknowledging the existing motives-since the sexual desires have been negatively judged in first place, and thus, have been avoided, repressed, and projected. With the 7th House Mercury being conjunct the Sun and Uranus also in the 7th House, this of course lead to a series of affairs with women who were his own clients, and others. Natal Pluto in Taurus being conjunct the North Node in Aries and Venus, all in the 6th House, with the North Node ruler Mars being in the 11th House, reflect the bottom line evolutionary intention of Freud’s Soul to analyze and objectify the nature of his own sexual desires, and the pre-existing orientation to relationships. Objectivity about himself was a prerequisite for objectivity about other people, allowing to listening and understanding other’s reality, and sexual reality, as it existed for others. However, after Freud had embraced the theory of a repressed sexual seduction based on the material produced by women labeled as hysterical, Freud recoiled and gave up this theory. On a letter sent to his friend Fliess on 21 September 1897, Freud exposed he thought the hypothesis of seduction had to be abandoned, because the recovered memories of seduction and abuse his clients had provided could be just fantasies, and further, because many cases of seduction or abuse did not result in hysteria or neurosis. He postulated in turn, as opposed to the seduction theory, that infantile sexuality was inherently polymorphous and perverse, and the types of psychological sexual conflicts he had previously uncovered were now thought to be inherent to the human desire nature before being properly ordered and repressed through education and culture. At the time of Freud’s letter to Fliess, transiting Pluto was Rx exactly conjuncting the natal Moon in the 8th House in Gemini, the transiting Moon’s nodes were exactly squaring natal Pluto, from the 9th House Leo to the 3rd House Aquarius, while transiting Uranus and Saturn were conjunct in Scorpio, in the natal 1st House, opposing natal Mercury, and transiting Mercury was Rx conjunct the natal Mars. No doubt this was a critical point in his Soul’s evolution, in which the intention that was unfolding was to metamorphose dynamics of rationalization leading to duplicity, by means of penetrating the own psychological and sexual dynamics in order to gain a bottom line objectify that would in turn allow for a deeper understanding of the psychological issues of his clients, thus serving to give his clients what they needed in order to heal. On the contrary, the change of the intellectual course which had been directly suggested by the information received by the clients, ie. the seduction hypothesis, to the theory of infantile perversity, reflects a response based on evolutionary resistance and fear to face the own shadow, translating in a fixity in the information he continued to provide his clients about their sexuality.